Customer Preferences for Service Process Automation and Implications for Optimal Service Design - A Case Study from the Unified Communications Market in Germany

Never before has IT been so crucial to the success of a service busi- ness like in today's highly competitive environment. Given the huge advance- ments of information technologies, automation in service processes has become a key design element. At the same time, designers of services must consider the impact of automation on the customer who is typically involved into the service delivery process. In this paper, we analyze customer preference for automation of service processes based on a conjoint experiment in the Unified Communica- tions industry and derive managerial implications for optimal service design. The results show that including higher levels of automation into the design of Unified Communications services is promising both from a customer and a cost perspective.